Tuna Poke! Hawaiian sashimi

Let's set the scene. Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Skaters paradise, surfers paradise. Palm trees and blue skies. It's December, you're wearing shorts and t-shirts sitting on the beach eating ice cream.
You're walking up and down the boardwalk marvelling at the fact there's an ACTUAL freak show (WTF) and muscle maniacs from muscle beach just down the road. You hire a skateboard, get drunk skate up and down and then discover a food vendor to die for. "Poke.Poke - The surfer's sashimi". Those two words together? surfing and sashimi? It couldn't be more appealing.

Pronounced pok-eh, it is essentially raw fish (ahi) marinated with a little bit of sesame oil, normally spring onions and a little bit of veg or rice but the idea is to keep it fairly simple. You can visit their website here.

Poke hails from Hawaii, so naturally it's dope as f***. It's served in small portions because raw fish is generally very rich and filling.

How do you piss-off Lady Gaga? Poker face.

Enough of the laughs. Let's get serious and recreate this absolutely incredible light, pretty, extremely healthy food. Again, it's cheaper than you think, easier than you think and heaven in the mouth ;)

So who do we have here? Fresh tuna steaks, a knobbin of root ginger, a pile of sesame seeds, Hugh's extra virgin rapeseed oil (whatever, Hugh), a ripe avocado, a couple of spring onions, one fresh red chilli and a red pepper. What isn't in the picture above is fresh coriander. That makes it even better and you should be using sesame oil instead of rapeseed, I just didn't have any.

Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and without any oil, toast your sesame seeds. That's the cooking part over. Stressed yet? no.

Then dice your tuna, slice the onions, finely finely finely slice the (peeled) root ginger. You will NOT need the amount in the picture, just use your own guess but a good rule is probably half a teaspoon will be enough.

Finely chop the chilli and then wash your hands in COLD water straight away. (For more tips visit http://rawrhubarb.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/tips.html) Again, the amount of red pepper you put in is optional depending on how much veg you want - the more the merrier with veg normally but this is more about the tuna and the dish is meant to be small so keep it to about a quarter of a pepper.

Give it all a good mix, add the sesame seeds and coriander and boom it's ready to go.

Super fresh, super healthy, colourful awesome feed. Another way to try raw fish if you're still part of the 'oh, God, no way' crew. It's amazing!